


Cool Motive, Still Murder

by polymathmichael



Series: The Six Demons [1]
Category: Shadowrun
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-17
Updated: 2017-06-17
Packaged: 2018-11-15 08:18:40
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,835
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11227011
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/polymathmichael/pseuds/polymathmichael





	Cool Motive, Still Murder

We didn’t have some bullshit fancy name, just a team designation. “Echo”. If they made the call to send in Echo Team, well, then the shit had truly hit the fan.

There were five other guys in the team. Our CO was a CIA operative. He’d picked up the name “Bandit” because he supposedly owned this classic Trans Am t-top back home. Then there were two Rangers, “Charlie" and “Rudy". Charlie was Vietnamese, but got adopted by some Minnesota family when he was an infant. He could win an award for most Caucasian. Picked up that racist ass nickname in basic but he thought it was hilarious so it stuck. He was our decker. Rudy played football at Notre Dame before some scandal got him kicked out. He worked our heavy weaponry. Then there was “Mother”. She was a hard ass Marine Corp Sniper. Got the name because “A boy’s best friend is their mother”. She saved our asses more than once. Last guy was a Company trained hermetic that went by “Jojo”. Apparently he’d referred to some Houngan one time as having “big mojo” and it backfired. He fucking hated that name.

They called me “Rider” cause of that damn Disney movie, of course.

We had a lot of good ops together. Did work all over the place. Saw a shit ton of Amazonia when we were doing raids on tempo manufacturing. Hit Neo-Tokyo for an extraction more than once. Couple ops in Dubai, one in Asamando. Several in HK during the Technomancer scare. Got to see Denver. Good times. Till I found out there was more to our destinations than I thought.

Here’s the thing about military flights: they don’t go through customs. Hell, some of them don’t even have official flight plans and never took off or landed. A unit could bring anything in to the country. 

Even when flying commercial, like guys coming back from deployment, their bags are rarely inspected. Unless a dog or chemical sniffer notices something, a soldier can just say “Nothing to declare” and skate through the immigration line. And the hero worship that most citizens afford the military means they’ll look a blind eye to the occasional contraband. Because they trust their soldiers. These are the guys defending their country after all. But this leaves a massive loophole available to exploit. Turned out, Bandit was doing just that.

We had just finished a job in Kowloon and were relaxing in a hotel outside HKG. This place was one step up from a coffin motel. Three to a room in beds that were less comfortable then berths on a ship. Mother, Charlie and I were chilling out in one room while Bandit, Rudy, and Jojo had gone off to find some strange. Charlie starts fucking around on his deck and decides to crack the hotel wireless. Which he does, easily, because we fucking roll hard. Turns out that this cheap ass hotel had put microcams in every room so they could monitor for damage. Of course Chuck starts cycling through them to see if he can find a room that’s accidentally making some homemade porn.

Mother and I left him to his voyeurism, but two minutes later he interrupted our AR feeds with the video from one of the rooms. It wasn’t some random couple fucking, though. It was Bandit, Rudy, and Jojo talking to a group of Chinese. There wasn’t any sound but it was obvious they were cutting some sort of deal. After a few minutes of talking, the three of them walked out with a slim courier style briefcase.

What the fuck did we just see?

Our flight back to the UCAS was commercial to Seattle, a one day layover while there, then military to FDC. We skated through customs and I didn’t see any mention of the case when we were asked about declarations. Bandit showed the agent his ID, said that we had nothing to declare, and we moved on. We piled into a cab and headed for Ft. Lewis. During the long ride through the pre-dawn, I eyed the rest of the team. Mother was restless and fidgeting. She had wanted to confront Bandit immediately, figuring he was the person organizing the side work. Jojo didn’t have the spine, she said, and Rudy was too dumb. I wasn’t sure about her reasons, but she was probably right about who was in charge. I could tell she wanted to bring it up now so I caught her eye and gave a slight shake of the head. She nodded. I hoped that meant she’d wait. Charlie just ignored us and was plugging into his deck. He’d wanted to forget that we’d seen anything.

Once on base, we grabbed rooms in a visitors barracks to get some sleep. Fifteen minutes after that, Charlie was piloting a microdrone under the door to Bandit's quarters. I’d managed to convince him that shit was too weird to just let slide. True to his habits, Bandit had fallen asleep within moments. Not that strange, really. As soon as you were in a secure environment and knew you didn’t have to go anywhere, sleep was the first thing you took care of. Next to the bunk was the case. I was up.  
Getting into Bandit's room was easy. Every field agent has a couple of tricks they use to keep people from getting into their room. I knew all of Bandit’s. Two minutes later I was opening the case and carefully removing an optical chip. A minute after that, I was out and the room looked like no one had just robbed the occupant.

Charlie slotted the chip in his deck. He had said it was probably nothing and that we were being paranoid. Moments later, he was puking on the floor. The chip was a master BTL, full of snuff and child porn. Whoever had this could use it to make millions in illicit nuyen. And the number of crimes committed to create it would have to number in the hundreds.

Moments later, Charlie had changed his mind and the chip was back in Bandit’s room. We couldn’t chance them finding out that we knew. Not yet at least. The three of us talked. We formed a plan. Then Mother and I headed back to our own rooms to get some sleep.

The alert came from Charlie at around 2300. Bandit, Jojo, and Rudy were on the move. Our flight wasn’t scheduled to take off for seven more hours so they must be heading to another meet. I had thought they’d try to move their merchandise today. We could usually grab a military flight with just a few hours wait, so this layover was extra long. Looking back over the mission logs I stored on my commlink, there had been half a dozen other times when we’d had an extra long layover. And it was always when we came back through Seattle.

We had figured they’d leave the base so we slipped a couple special tags onto them earlier in the evening. They’d only respond if hit at the right frequency with the right code embedded in the signal. It kept them from being detected by your standard commlink.

They hopped in jeep and headed off, but we didn’t need to track them for long. Five minutes after they left, they stopped. Apparently whoever they were meeting already had access to the base. The three of us quickly followed, arriving at an old hangar in a lesser used portion of the base. We could see the jeep and two black sedans out front. There were some lights on and the hangar doors were open. I could see Bandit, Jojo, and Rudy talk to a group people in suits. All east Asian. Several of the men in the back had SMGs. The cuff of one slid up and I could see tattoos around his wrist. Yakuza.  
Charlie and Mother took up positions as overwatch and I walked toward the hangar. We could have used the element of surprise and just taken out the entire group, but we were more interested in information.

I could immediately tell that Jojo and Rudy were taken aback by my sudden appearance. Bandit smiled like he had been expecting this. The Yaks looked pissed and had their guns trained on me.

“Finally figured out something was going on, didja? What was it?"

“The layovers. Always in Seattle. Always an extra day."

Bandit let out a short bark of laughter and waved a hand at his business partners, indicating they should lower their weapons. “Well, we’re making more than enough to cut in a fourth. Is that what you want? Your share?"

“Hold on a sec.” Rudy started to speak but stopped when I pulled my pistol and pointed it at Bandit.

“No. I want you to stop and turn yourself in. There's some horrible shit on that chip. I’ve got more than enough vid to get you locked up.”

I was angry. And it was making me stupid. I should have just joined them and got the MPs involved later. But I couldn’t get the images that Charlie described out of my head.

Bandit let out another laugh and looked at me. “That’s not gonna hap…” He was cut off as I moved my pistol and shot Jojo in the face. I never liked that fucker anyway.

Then it was a shoot out.

Two minutes later and I knew that Mother was dead, taken out by a sniper the Yaks had dropped off on their drive in. Not before she took out Rudy and three of the Yaks, though. Charlie was dead, too. He’d handled Mother’s killer after it had revealed itself and ran to join me in the hangar. I put a couple rounds into Bandit and then started taking out the rest of the Yaks, grabbing what little cover I could. Charlie had tried but he got caught in the open. I'd taken a round to the leg and one to the shoulder. Couldn’t walk or push myself up to standing.

I heard the slow, wet sounds of Bandit’s breathing. My first shot had ripped through his neck. He didn’t have long. A message came across my commlink. “You’re fucked.” was all it said. Attached was a log. Bandit was dumping his files to our superiors. He was using his last moments to burn me. The sound of sirens heading my way broke the silence.

A court martial followed, of course. I had no proof to dispute Bandit’s records. All the evidence showed that the entire team had been dealing with the Yakuza for the past couple years. They said they’d go easy on me if I could help them find the money, or give up some names, but I didn’t have any of that. That made Leavenworth my destination.

And if I hadn’t met a huge troll while waiting for a transfer in St. Louis, I’d probably be there right now.


End file.
